The Inquisitor's Apprentice Read Online Free PDF Page A

onions.
    "Sit!" she said, carving a massive slice of black bread off the loaf for him. "Eat! You need your strength today!"
    Sacha stared, overwhelmed. Yesterday he'd been a kid. Today his mother was taking care of him just like she took care of his father—as if he were a grown man going off to work.
    And she was right, crazy as it sounded. Even a lowly Apprentice Inquisitor made more money than Sacha's father earned working twelve-hour shifts at the docks. Sacha hadn't been able to look his father in the eye for days after he'd found that out. But what could you do about it? America was a new world, where none of the old rules applied.
    Only when he was already at the table eating did he realize the other amazing thing: that his mother was doing any of this at all a few short hours after she'd been knocked unconscious and robbed in the street.
    "How are you feeling?" he asked her.
    "How should I be feeling?"
    "Well—I mean—after last night—"
    His mother made a disdainful spitting sound that seemed to dismiss the violent theft of her most treasured possession as a mere triviality. "Be quiet and eat your breakfast!"
    Sacha obeyed—as if he had any choice in the matter. But he couldn't help shaking his head in wonder. He'd read enough adventure stories in
Boys Weekly
to be pretty sure that any normal American mother would still be lying around fainting and crying into her handkerchief after such a shock. Sacha wasn't sure how to feel about this. Because the truth was that he often wished his family would act more normal and less ... well ... foreign. But on the other hand, normal parents would probably have never managed to get him and Bekah to America in the first place.
    Either way, he could see that his mother had put the loss behind her and didn't intend to talk about it again. And he knew she'd only get angry with anyone who tried to offer sympathy—almost as angry as Mr. Kessler would get if Sacha ever dared to suggest that his cough was getting worse every winter and he might want to think about taking it a little easier now that Sacha was old enough to earn a paycheck.
    The early morning symphony of ash bins and trash cans had just begun when the three of them left for work together. Uncle Mordechai had come in late again and was sleeping against the door on a pile of Mrs. Lehrer's unfinished sewing. They clambered over him, Sacha's father muttering all the while that any grown man who slept this late deserved to get stepped on. They crept through the back room, trying not to wake the Lehrers. Then they slipped out the door and felt their way down the unlit stairs into the pale gray light of a New York dawn.
    They stood on the front stoop to say their goodbyes. From here Sacha's father would go east to the docks while his mother went west to the Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory. And Sacha would head north to Astral Place to catch the subway.
    But Sacha's mother didn't seem ready to leave quite yet. She glanced at him as if she wanted to say something but couldn't find the right words. Then she turned away to watch the garbage men, as if they were the most interesting thing she'd seen in weeks. Then she sniffled and dug through her purse to find a nickel for his subway fare.
    She pushed the coin into his hand.
    "Thanks," Sacha mumbled.
    "I don't want them to think I sent you to work with dirty shoes your first day," she said. Then she pulled out a handkerchief, blew her nose—and surreptitiously dabbed at her eyes a few times.
    Sacha gave her a hug. He tried to give her a kiss too, but she pushed him away. "Enough mooning around. Do you want to be late for your first day of work?"
    "Go figure," Sacha's father said as they watched her hurry away. "The woman watches Cossacks burn her house down, walks halfway across Europe, and gets mugged on the Bowery without shedding a tear, but she can't put her son on the subway without getting all
verklempt.
" He shrugged eloquently. "As the great Rabbi